Book Review - The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

I picked this one up on a very enthusiastic recommendation from a friend. We all have books we like, books we love, and book about whic we become downright evangelical. For him, this bordered on the latter. I'm not evangelical about it by any stretch, and am not even quite sure that I love it, but did like it very much and am glad to have given Grossman a measure of my time.

The Magicians follows three well-worn fantasy tropes: the wizard school, the fantasy novel that ends up being real, and the secret history. The latter element is given disappointingly short shrift.  We're given hints that wizards among us quietly spread their influence, but all we see any of them doing outside the magic school is either recruiting new prospective wizards or idling their time away at a sinecure arranged by seemingly limitless magical influence and wealth. The description of the latter, somewhat late in the novel, felt as if it were written by someone ignorant of anything about the corporate world aside from surface appearances and, at first, felt like a very weak part of the novel. Looking more closely, it fits into one of Grossman's main themes: a deconstruction of the nerd author-insertion wish-fulfillment novel.

At first, the book appeared that it was going to be pure wish-fulfillment fantasy. We're introduced to Quentin, the oh so very smart seventeen year old with an Ivy-league future ahead of him, a headful of fantasy novels, but no real sense of belonging with his peers or any real plans or ambitions. So of course he'll end up at a wizarding school, of course they'll find something special about him there, and of course he'll end up a part of some epic quest the likes of which even the magical world has never seen. He'll eventually find expertise as a wizard, learn the truth about the much-beloved children's fantasy world of Fillory, and go on to have great adventures.  It's obvious and predictable, which is why I was pleased and impressed that it didn't follow formula.

Instead, we find Quentin where many top of their class wunderkinds find themselves. He's suddenly transported from a place where he was special to the place where all the special kids go, where to be a genius by any other measure is to be squarely average. Along the way we find a magic school which, while not as fantasical as Roke Island in Ursula Leguin's _A Wizard of Earthsea_ (for my money the best description of an education in magical arts I've ever read. If you've not read Leguin's Earthsea books, put this review down right now and go get them. If you haven't read them but watched the miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel, you might need to lobotomize yourself first), but it did a nice job injecting genuine wonder into something which should be wondrous; the sequence involving the students' taking part in the mysterious fourth year "disappearance" was both lyrical and fascinating.

What I found a touch disappointing and what grounded the book a bit too much for my taste is that Grossman's storytelling was strictly linear. Towards the end we get some marvelous set-pieces with magical battles that could have been beautifully fimled as a Peter Jackson epic followed by a culmination of several story threads, yet the nature of the book lead us to not really feel that these were threads we'd been following all along. For all of its import, we'd seen very little of the magical world of Fillory until we're ready to go there. There are hints, but never quite enough. Later still, when we learn secrets about time-travel, they do little to disorient the reader the way great time-travel or multiple-worlds novels can. Here I'm thinking of things like Hal Duncan's Vellum or even Neal Stephenson's Anathem. Still, not being a modernist experimental writer needn't be a strike against. It just felt to me like a missed opportunity.

Finally, I'll not spoil the ending here but offer an observation: the scene and language used made it appear to be a note of hope, yet I found it vaguely depressing. It appeared to me that Quentin hadn't really had a character arc, but ended in much the same place as he began; as a follower with no dreams or plans of his own, going along to the next thing because it seemed to inevitably come next. Your mileage, of course, may vary and I'd be quite interested in hearing from people who read this differently than I did.

Three stars.

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G is for Glamour in Glass

Today I have another book review for you, of Glamour in Glass Mary Robinette Kowal's sequel to World Fantasy Award winner Shades of Milk and Honey.
For those who've forgotten, Shades of Milk and Honey is, in brief, a regency romance with a touch of magic. The fantastical element lies mainly in the creation of glamours - illusions and other effects formed by a kind of psychic manipulation of the aether (which, in this world, appears to be a real thing). There were multiple suitors, misunderstandings, love-triangles, secret pasts, and a beautifuly written relationship between the sharp, independent Jane and her more beautiful but less wordly younger sister, Melody. They were sometimes competitive, sometimes dismissive of eachother, sometimes jealous, sometimes supportive, and sometimes just don't quite understand eachother. Shades of Milk and Honey also introduced Vincent, a sometimes troubled, sometimes moody but brilliant glamourist with both an artistic eye and a drive towards technical innovation.  It is a romance, and by the novel's end Jane and Vincent are wed.
Glamour in Glass begins not far from where Shades of Milk and Honey ended - with the Vincents newly married, much in demand for their artistic talents (they aren't merely glamourists, but some of the world's best glamourists). There's a lovely moment when, after feeling slighted by her husband's not including her in some element of their work, Jane immediately confronts him and tells him her feelings. It's a sign that Kowal knows how to let her characters act like real, reasonable people and that any misunderstandings won't come from people not telling eachother things  just so the author can create tension. It also tells us that we're reading about smart, reasonable people.

Tensions do come (it wouldn't be much of a book without them, now would it?) during the trip Vincent and a newly-pregnant Jane take to the continent to visit Vincent's old mentor. Napolean has just escaped from Elba to begin his ill-fated attempt to reclaim his empire, leaving a populace divided between those loyal to the current regime and those who long for Napolean's return. Add a mysterious long-term assignment for Vincent, Jane's inability to travel because of her delicate condition, and we get a feeling of real trouble.

Another thread winding through this part of the novel are the couple's attempt to record a glamour using the glass prisms suggested by the title. The experimentation was a fascinating picture of bright, talented people struggling at the edges  of a new and poorly understood science. There were setbacks, but ultimately triumphs. 

And, of course, it wouldn't fit into the period without some intrigue. Without giving too much away, know that there are hidden agendas, conflicting loyalties, and an actual surprise or two.

All of the narrative threads - the secret goals, the experiments in glamour, and the looming war - come together for a dramatic climax in which a victory is won, but at a steep cost. I'll not spoil it here, but that cost - and the characters' different reactions to it - were beautifully written and felt quite real.
I'll close with a word about language in this book; Kowal took the effort to painstakingly cross-reference all of the words she used here with actual works written in the nineteenth century so, even more so than with Shades of Milk and Honey, this book is of its time. This effort gives the book a wonderful feel of authenticity.
Highly recommended. Four stars.

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B is for (independent) Book Review: Nails Jane by Trista Guiseppe

I encountered Trista Guiseppe on the Google+ social networking site shortly after the completion of her first novel. Following it the first of what I expect to be three short book-reviews in the a-to-z month. Look for more reviews at "G" and "L".

In her debut novel, Nails Jane, Trista Guiseppe gives us an action-packed blend of new space opera, weird-tale, and philosophical meditation. Even if her reach sometimes exceeds her grasp (which it does), and the disparate pieces don't fit together perfectly (which they don't), it's still an entertaining, fast-paced read.

It opens as the story of Eva, a woman in present-day realistic Earth with a job she hates, a troubled marriage, and enigmatic dreams hinting of another world beyond this one and another identity. When she is approached by a mysterious stranger with apparently supernatural powers and more knowledge about her than he should reasonably posess, it feels like well-tread familiar ground. Then the narrative breaks into the first part of a counterfactual secret history regarding a malign entity which has been manipulating the human race for the purpose of keeping us from fulfilling our potential and becoming a threat. There's a strong anti-religion message in much of this,  but the work embraces the supernatural in a way that makes it far more than - and far different from -  a rationalist screed.

The book then dances from military SF to fable and back again in a dizzying series of tonal shifts. We meet  Ati, an apparent doppleganger of Eva. We briefly learn of - but see little of - aliens. We're told myths of a creator of worlds and his battles with a destructive beast, of a Death figure who shirked his duties, of archetypical artists and scuptures. Some of these stories don't all fit thematically with the rest of the novel, and can sometimes feel like an author's attempt to clarify a philosophical point. Others - most notably the segments with death - tie into the rest of the work beautifuly in a blending of science and fantasy vaguely reminiscent of Elizabeth Bear's All the Windwracked Stars.

 There's a paramilitary organization dedicated to fighting the threat of Versinon, a world-spanning evil. There are conflicts with powerful beings capable of destroying worlds, encounters with gods or creatures close to it, and a final conflict in which there are challenges, threats, sacrifices. I very much enjoyed the ride, but at the end felt that there was something missing. THe world-destroying evil? Really a greate evil. Those military commanders who seemed to be treasonous or corrupt? Really treasonous or corrupt. Great speculative literature is perhaps better than anything at turning your world upside-down, at telling you that everything you thought you knew was wrong. Think of moments in Dan Simmons' Hyperion series when we first see the world from the perspective of the Ousters or we learn what this faster-than-light travel really costs. In a much smaller way, there's a moment in Mary Robinette Kowal's forthcoming Without a Summer in which the point-of-view character's entire perception of someone - a perception which the reader likely took for granted - is wrong. Here we don't get any of that; yes, there are philosophical trimmings, but they end up being window-dressing in a story which, for all of its scope and grandeur is surprisingly linear and simple.

So, I'll give this three out of five stars with a recommendation to pick it up for some light, enjoyable reading in hopes that Guiseppe's next effort will take us just a little bit deeper.




 Tomorrow we'll stay with books and bring you C for Characters, then move back to pixels with D for digital.

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